How to understand your feelings better?
Your ability to understand and recognize your own feelings and emotions is essential for your health and well-being. Note that your feelings are the specific ways through which your body can communicate with you regarding the things that are going on. For instance, expect to feel anger, sadness, or fear every time you are upset about something.
With the proven importance of understanding your own emotions, it is advisable to do something about how you can improve your ability in this area. Check out our tips below for some effective tips in understanding and recognizing your feelings better:
Tune in to your feelings on various situations
Make it a point to spend each day tuning in to all feelings you experience. For instance, observe how you feel when someone invites you to visit a specific place. Do you feel excited? What about when an exam or an interview is coming up? Are you nervous? Do you feel relaxed whenever you listen to music or watch a movie?
Observe your feelings on whatever situation you are in every day. That way, you can name your emotion and understand it even better.
Rate your feelings
Another effective tip in gaining more awareness and understanding about your feelings is to rate them depending on their intensity. After sensing an emotion and naming it, take a step forward by rating its intensity. Determine how strong your feelings are. You can rate it based on a scale of one to ten with ten being the most intense. This can significantly improve your ability to understand what you feel.
Record the time when a specific emotion/feeling occurs
Every time you feel an intense emotion, record it. The good thing about this tip is that it lets you learn more about all the emotions you are experiencing, especially the intense ones. Aside from that, the record will also give you an idea about what triggers a particular emotion. With that, you can avoid the onset of negative feelings or emotions, especially those that seem to affect your day-to-day routines.
Share your feelings to those close to you
You can further raise your awareness about your feelings by sharing them with others, particularly your loved ones or those close to you. It is a great way to put your feelings into words. One advantage of doing this is that it also improves your bond and closeness with your friends or loved ones. If you can, try to share your feelings with someone every day. This is also a great way to become more comfortable about yourself and what you feel.
Conclusion
Understanding your own feelings is the key to having full control of them. Just make sure that you continue reminding yourself that feelings or emotions are neither too bad nor too good. They just occur naturally, so avoid judging your feelings. Just continue naming and acknowledging them, so you can use them to your most favorable advantage.
